Nitish Kumar and Giriraj Singh.
Credit: PTI Photos
Curtailment of 'Hindu holidays' in schools across Bihar shows that the Nitish Kumar government wants to impose the law of Sharia and establish an Islamic state, Union minister Giriraj Singh alleged on Saturday.
Singh, who is the BJP MP from Begusarai, made the remarks while staging a demonstration in his Lok Sabha constituency, which culminated in the burning of an effigy of Kumar, the state's longest-serving CM.
'It is an attempt to dissociate children from Sanatan culture so that they remain unaware of festivals like Haritalika Teej, Janmashtami and Navratri,' said Singh referring to the revised calendar introduced by the state education department.
"I challenge the government in Bihar to reduce any of the holidays falling on Muslim festivals. Alas, they dare to tinker with Hindu sensibilities because this community is divided along caste lines", he also alleged.
A pushback came from the JD(U) of Kumar, a former BJP ally now firmly in the opposition camp, which accused the Narendra Modi government of showing an 'anti-Hindu mindset' by convening a Parliament session during the Ganesh Chaturthi festivities.
Singh also alleged, 'We shall unite Hindus to foil the designs of Nitish Kumar, who made Bihar a hub of PFI, and his ally Lalu Prasad, who had let SIMI spread its tentacles across the state while in power.' The BJP leader also said that 'the state government must withdraw the order cancelling Hindu holidays. Failure to do so will be deemed as an attempt to convert Bihar into an Islamic state ruled as per the Sharia'.
Meanwhile, at a press meet in the state capital, JD(U)'s chief spokesman Neeraj Kumar said, 'The government at the Centre has an anti-Hindu mindset as evident from its decision to call a special session of Parliament during Ganesh Chaturthi. They should tell us on which date of the Hindu almanac's Shravan month was the cabinet nod given for the session'.
The JD(U) spokesman, who is also an MLC and a former state minister, said, 'We suspect that the formalities were never completed, as is evident from the manner in which the Union parliamentary affairs minister informed about the session, casually, in a tweet'.